A game tester at Naughty Dog has guided Nathan Drake through countless enemies, a couple of continents, and at least one plane crash in only 188 minutes.

Uncharted 3 director Justin Richmond recently broke the news to Official PlayStation Magazine that one of his staffers (who, like a true ninja, has gone unnamed) took down the product of years of top-notch game development in less time than it would take to watch The Fellowship of the Ring. Reportedly, the speed run was completed on the game's easiest setting, and the tester was already more than familiar with the game and its puzzles, but you've still got to give John Doe some credit. Three hours. Nicely done.

This is the second lightning speed run announcement regarding one of the (too?) many amazing titles coming out in Q4 of this year. Earlier this month, a QA tester at Bethesda clocked an impressive two hour and sixteen minute run of Skyrim during an internal competition. As it's obvious that neither of these titles were designed for people to complete them in even close to these times, it just goes to show you how often testers must playing these games over and over, front-to-back.

It's hard to say what the final length of the campaign will be (what with the exploration, treasure hunting, quippy one-liners, and what not) but it's probably a safe bet that it will take the rest of us a hell of a lot longer to get Drake neck deep in trouble and pull him back out again than three hours. We'll all have our chance to either try and beat Naughty Dog's tester, or just, you know, enjoy the game soon enough, though. Uncharted 3 hits stores on November 1st.

Speed runs give so many people the wrong impressions about games. From this, an uninformed gamer would think that both Uncharted and Skyrim are terribly short or that Skyrim will be shorter than Uncharted.

This is actually pretty bad. If this was an open world game like Fallout then I would be fine since first, there will be a lot of side quests and second, there will probably be a way to get to a later point in the game without doing a few quests. But in a linear game like this, its not right. I dont care if its on the easiest settings, that means that even on hard you can beat it in about 6-7 hours if your skilled enough.

ToastiestZombie:This is actually pretty bad. If this was an open world game like Fallout then I would be fine since first, there will be a lot of side quests and second, there will probably be a way to get to a later point in the game without doing a few quests. But in a linear game like this, its not right. I dont care if its on the easiest settings, that means that even on hard you can beat it in about 6-7 hours if your skilled enough.

Or that the tester was skilled enough to be able to rush through the game and solve all the puzzles quickly

Omnific One:Speed runs give so many people the wrong impressions about games. From this, an uninformed gamer would think that both Uncharted and Skyrim are terribly short or that Skyrim will be shorter than Uncharted.

Yeah, I thought from the headline this was going to be more a normal play. Speedruns only really matter in terms of bragging rights.

Omnific One:Speed runs give so many people the wrong impressions about games. From this, an uninformed gamer would think that both Uncharted and Skyrim are terribly short or that Skyrim will be shorter than Uncharted.

Case in point: someone has already beaten Demon's Souls in less than 1 hour.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWi6t8Psv9wAnd I doubt anyone in their right mind would say that game is short or, *gasp*, easy (saying that word next to Demon's Souls feels like profanity).

You can't really compare the two. Since skyrim is an open world, you can just slam through the main quest and "beat" the game. I believe the Uncharted games are much more linear (feel free to correct me on this, I don't own a PS3) so it would make sense that the "main quest" would take longer, since that would be the bulk of the game.

OT: chalk another one up for epic speed runs. I guess this is a common thing to do for fun if you're a QA tester.

I don't think that Skyrim's run and this one's are really all that comparable. See, this game is one linear shooter, whereas Skyrim's main quest is one of many different quests that all probably take at least an hour, most probably a good bit more.

Both will probably take the average player substantially longer, though, considering that playtesters have been doing this same thing for months.

The OP:As it's obvious that neither of these titles were designed for people to complete them in even close to these times, it just goes to show you how often testers must playing these games over and over, front-to-back.

The OP:As it's obvious that neither of these titles were designed for people to complete them in even close to these times, it just goes to show you how often testers must playing these games over and over, front-to-back.

The OP:As it's obvious that neither of these titles were designed for people to complete them in even close to these times, it just goes to show you how often testers must playing these games over and over, front-to-back.

I really wish I could make the irony of what you just re-posted to me even more clear than it already is.

Phew. For a moment I thought you were being deadly serious, which, let's face it, is not outside the realms of possibility here. Damn I wish there was an easier way to express sarcasm through text that isn't the word [sarcasm] round posts.

Omnific One:Speed runs give so many people the wrong impressions about games. From this, an uninformed gamer would think that both Uncharted and Skyrim are terribly short or that Skyrim will be shorter than Uncharted.

Agreed. Take Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight for instance. It took me over half a year to finally finish that game, yet there's this speedrun that clocks in at less than half an hour:

So are they going to have a time trial mode where you have to beat this guy's time for a platinum relic?

With the whole Skyrim beaten at about 2 hours to the said 3 of Uncharted 3 (Odd number match there) it depends on the level choke points aka bottle necks you're forced to go through to progress. Add side quest/treasure collecting and this will be a different argument altogether.

ToastiestZombie:This is actually pretty bad. If this was an open world game like Fallout then I would be fine since first, there will be a lot of side quests and second, there will probably be a way to get to a later point in the game without doing a few quests. But in a linear game like this, its not right. I dont care if its on the easiest settings, that means that even on hard you can beat it in about 6-7 hours if your skilled enough.

Not really when you think about it. The more you play a game the better at it you get and the faster you can do it. This time was set by somebody who has literally been working with the game for years. The guy has probably beaten it atleast a dozen times already and knows every single puzzle, fight, etc. Lets use portal as an example. The first time I played it it took around an hour and a half to beat it. The next time it took me mabey half an hour.

Omnific One:Speed runs give so many people the wrong impressions about games. From this, an uninformed gamer would think that both Uncharted and Skyrim are terribly short or that Skyrim will be shorter than Uncharted.

I kinda agree and disagree, yeah it's a speed run so it should be completed in a short amount of time but for a liner experience like Uncharted this probably means that the campaign can be done in about 6 hours by an average gamer which is disgusting for a game they want us to spend $60 or £40 in my case at least with Skyrim you are guarunteed to have side quests etc.

And yeah I'm ignoring the multiplayer aspect of Uncharted but that's because I really hate it, it feels so tacked on imo.

Thats their job. Doesn't mean the game is necessarily very short, and besides, quality does not equal quantity. I'd rather have three hours of a totally kickass game that I'd play again over and over than twenty hours of a relatively "meh" game.

I remember the hardest unlock in Super Metroid required you to beat the game in less than 4 hours. That was brutal because it was easy to get lost. I'm sure the speed runs for such games would clock in for just over an hour. My point: You could easily spend 4 times that amount of time beating the game. Though, there is that one time with Homefront. Which did turn out to be really short. Meh, you can never tell. I know you won't be able to beat Skyrim that fast unless you were really trying hard and doing nothing else but the main story. In Uncharted 3, there is only the main story, accentuated by puzzles and treasure hunting. To think some people believe they are comparable, that is just ridiculous. Bethesda said that in order to get all perks it would take a thousand hours.

ToastiestZombie:that means that even on hard you can beat it in about 6-7 hours if your skilled enough.

More likely it means that on the hardest difficulty you could beat it in 6-7 hours if you're familiar with the game, know how to solve all of the puzzles beforehand, and skip every bit of story presented in the game.

I doubt it's half as bad as your brain seems to think it is. For the record, I beat Uncharted 2 on normal, hard, and the hardest difficulty back to back right after it came out. By the time I did the hardest difficulty playthrough, I was so used to the game that it didn't feel any harder than normal, and it took me less time as well. That doesn't mean that Uncharted 2 was a short game though.